bwagy

As many of you may have heard (and seen the occasional spy shot) my first book The Best Ideas are Free is due out soon.

I sat down last year after 6 months of blogging, printed out every post and spent an afternoon selecting the 63 best ideas.

Since then they have been put together into a book – 63 easily digestible ideas to chew on.

It will soon be available to the general public (I expect to ship July 6th but that may move up if time allows) but I will be opening pre-orders exclusively to you guys.  This is to thank you for all your support, comments (good or bad), readership and to celebrate my 1 year anniversary of blogging!

Now I will be the first to admit that yes you can browse through the blog and read the ideas for free (go for it I encourage you) but hey how much cooler is it having a book?

The book is designed to be such that you can open it up on any page, read an idea within 30 seconds, pick it up and run with it.  The first time you read it you won’t get them all but reread it three months from now another one may be relevant.

If you enjoy the blog you’ll love the book.  Like the blog it is colloquial format – as if I am having a conversation with you.  DO NOT expect a typical book – expect my blog in phsyical form (and yes with all my quirks!).  This truly is a book the way I would want a book to be..

For the 130 pages of goodness you will be given the opportunity to pre-order 1 of 63 limited edition signed copies.

To snag one enter your email below and I will be in touch (first in first served).

(Update 3rd Aug 09: The book is now out, you can click the book cover to the left in the sidebar to get a copy off Amazon or visit www.thebestideasarefree.com thanks – Ben).

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What would you like your customers to be excited about?

Are they?

Why not?

I got an impatient email “When is the book coming out Ben?”.

I explained the hold ups but if you step back a second.

How neat is that that someone is excited enough about it to send me an email about it?

Think about the passion Apple fans have for their product do you have that? It is a worthy goal.

How can you improve yoru communications such that your customers can’t wait for your latest revision?

The Best Ideas are Free we know that.

But often in a business scenario to stimulate the idea generation we need to part with some dollars.

A few crowdsourcing sites have popped up, the idea is to tap into a large crowd to generate ideas for marketing, business and general problems.

Fantastic model.

Yet for Marketing I think its slightly overengineered and appeals to a slightly lemon market.

That is those that have the time to invest in the site may not necessarily be that savvy (exception to the rule is those that commit time to invest in it strategically).  

Typically the target market are very time poor and do not have the time or resources to invest into yet another social resource.

I think a simple email list suffices.

Create a list of interested parties, email then occaisonally with a marketing problem, provide them with a bounty.

Keep it simple.

Right, I have some announcements,

• I will be speaking on a panel at the 2nd Digital Media Summit next March on Gen C.  More info here.  I will try to get video content to share with you.
• My blog will be syndicated onto GetFrank.co.nz once a fortnight under the Design & Inspiration section to share with their audience, am very stoked and proud to be selected.  My first post will be up soon.
• My book The Best Ideas are Free is coming out early next year, I will have the site up and pre-orders in the coming weeks (with a bonus for all those who pre-order)

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